


where fancy footwork can get you

by quietmoon



Series: SASO 2016 [7]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: (failed), (writing this made me ship this tiny rarepair im so confused for myself), :-), Canon Compliant, Fluff, Humor, Love Confessions, M/M, and ye t, hinata as wingman, kouji is adorable, tanaka is my all time fave, this is so ridiculous and yet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-20
Updated: 2016-06-20
Packaged: 2020-07-28 19:29:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20069359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quietmoon/pseuds/quietmoon
Summary: And that, simply put, is how Tanaka Ryūnosuke ends up getting dragged along to a first year gōkon as courtesy of Hinata Shōyō.More or less.





	where fancy footwork can get you

**Author's Note:**

> _reposted from my [orphaned work](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7256803) with AO3's permission_

Here's how it happens.

Hinata yells so loud Yachi drops the bucket of water she was fetching to help wipe up the ink Yamaguchi spilled from the pen Tsukishima broke when he heard that Hinata had organised a gōkon. She soaks her summer shirt semi-transparent in the process and proceeds to freak out Yachi-style, with Hinata and Kageyama having a shouting argument in the background Yamaguchi stuttering apologies, at which point Tsukishima incredibly grudgingly offers up the only clean piece of clothing in the vicinity, a very small and very worn hoodie with a stegosaurus print on it.

This is the moment Noya walks back into the gym, who bursts into a fit of laughter so violent and sudden that the bag of volleyballs he was supposed to deposit in the storage room slips from his fingers and spills all over the floor. Kageyama and Hinata's argument devolves into a volleyball dodgeball war. Yachi is shivering. Tsukishima's ears are pink. Yamaguchi is on his knees desperately trying to rub ink out of the gym floor.

And it is this environment — with this _carnage_ being wreaked right behind his back — that Ennoshita, newly minted captain of Karasuno, is trying to discuss defense tactics with Ryūnosuke (who, by now, is crying from how hard he's holding his laughter in). Or _was_ trying.

So Ennoshita turns around, ready to march in and salvage the situation, when he hears Hinata talking about previously mentioned gōkon, then sighs, rolls his eyes, shoves Ryū — who is in literal stitches — towards them and tells him to salvage the situation because apparently, "It's your kind of thing, Tanaka". But by now Kageyama is storming out of the gym and Hinata's shouting about how cowardly it is to bow out of a commitment at the last minute, and Yachi's still crying, and Yamaguchi looks like he's halfway there, and Ryū can't be sure if Tsukishima wants to kill Hinata or himself, and Noya is on the floor in the corner literally gasping for air, crouched in a sea of volleyballs, definitively out for the count.

And that, simply put, is how Tanaka Ryūnosuke ends up getting dragged along to a first year gōkon as courtesy of Hinata Shōyō.

More or less.

* * *

"I still don't get why you're here," Kouji mumbles, and Ryū is so ready to explain again for a third time when—

"No, no, it's okay, you don't need to go over it again," Izumi cuts him off. He looks harassed. Ryū wonders if he always looks like that or if it's just the effect he's having. (Both are hilarious and make him kinda happy.)

"Let's just..." he goes on to mutters before walking on ahead to join Hinata, who's leading their group through the maze of the arcade. He throws a furtive glance back at Ryū and his friend as he does.

Ryū grins. Definitely the latter.

"So, first year kiddo," he says slowly, turning to Kouji with a leer.

The boy looks somewhere between stricken and unimpressed. "Y-Yeah?"

"You played any volleyball recently?"

Kouji laughs, but Ryū doesn't take it to heart because, firstly, it's a fair topic of conversation; secondly, this is a volleyball club outing that Hinata's friends are actually crashing (because majority rules, that's why); and thirdly, it's the first thing he thought of, you're _welcome_.

"No, senpai," the kid says, having no idea of the power of his words, "I told you I was in the football club, not the volleyball club. Shōyō just likes to drag me along."

* * *

Listen. Hear Ryū out. This is how it happens.

He accidentally scared away the girls (we're not talking about it), so they decided to spend some time in the arcade since they were already there. Hinata insists there's a good game they absolutely need to play and leads the way (despite the fact that he lives a mountain-trail bike-ride away). His friends go with it. Ryū goes with it.

But then Kouji, part of said pair of friends, calls Ryū senpai, and that's where it starts to go downhill. So Ryū's over here impressing the kid (obviously), and Hinata's trying to start up this dance machine, and Kouji has that expression again where he doesn't seem to know if he's flattered or weirded out.

And that's when Tsukishima, hearing Ryū speaking to Kouji, challenges him to a dance-off if, and Ryū quotes, "He's all that." Because Tsukishima Kei is a rude little shit.

And because he may be a rude little shit but he's Ryū's rude little _kouhei_ shit, he accepts the challenge, but Yamaguchi casually jokes that it's 'a challenge to the new ace', Hinata puffs up like a pigeon and leaps on the dance machine so hard it beeps in warning.

One dance-off later, the loser leaves the floor and Ryū smirks down at his underclassmen with a smug smirk.

"Anyone else dare challenge me?"

So of course Tsukishima, being Tsukishima, gets that expression he's known for, that constipated one, you know, when he's trying to figure out how best to block an annoyingly good rival spiker and ends up pushing Kouji of all people onto the dance machine.

And... Ryū slips. So he... doesn't win.

But of course they have to rectify the situation so while everyone else runs off to get ice-cream and snacks ("as is the audience's prerogative," Tsukishima had announced in his snarky shitty way, the brat), Ryū and Kouji go at it for a fifth time.

* * *

Ryū has won once. The only person who hasn't floated off to some other machine is Hinata, who eyes are transfixed on his friend with a starry-eyed expression that shouts 'teach me your ways'. But the moment they finish their most recent game, Hinata gets a call from Kageyama and goes off to answer it with a funny look on his face.

"How—" Ryū pants as he leans back on the small platform's railing, oggling at Kouji with a newfound respect, "are you— so good— at this game?"

Kouji shrugs, looking uncomfortable. "I don't know, I... It's easy to get the hang of once you try."

"Have you done this a lot?" Ryū slots in coins for an eleventh game. "Let me guess, you secretly love this game, right? Tsukishima set me up, didn't he, that little bastard..."

"No, I just..." Kouji glances back at Tsukishima, who's leaning over the chair of the racing game Yamaguchi has gotten fourth place in four consecutive times and hissing instructions in his best friend's ear. "I've come here once or twice with Shōyō and those guys, I suppose. We've played this a few times?"

Ryū is not satisfied with this answer. His expression shows it. (Heh.)

"I guess," Kouji amends slowly, blinking at him cluelessly, "it's because of my footwork?"

He raises an eyebrow. "Your footwork?"

"My... My footwork."

"Why are you blushing?"

"I'm not—"

"Your footwork?"

"My footwork! I-I have good footwork!" Kouji says loudly, voice insistent. The blush has spread from his years to his cheeks.

It dawns on Ryū all of a sudden. He leans back, finger pointing accusingly, and shouts, "The football club, right?!"

Kouji looks a bit put-out. "Yeah..."

"I knew it!" He swings an arm around his shoulder. "I said so last time, didn't I? You had good footwork!"

Ryū feels the kid jump against him before pushing away and glaring at him, cheeks pink. "I thought you forgot!"

Ryū opens his mouth to refute such a ridiculous notion but nothing comes out. Thank God Tsukishima is still waging war with the racing game, or who knows what kind of smartass comment he'd have to pointedly ignore.

He leans forward and conspiratorially whispers to Kouji, "Alright, I'm sorry, just don't tell that asshole I forgot."

When Kouji starts laughing, Ryū grins back, falling back on his heels and starts punching in the details for a twelfth game. His glutes are burning like they do after a thorough extra training session, and he resolves to drag Noya, Ennoshita, Narita and Kinoshita back here for an after-hours work-out. It's _tough work!_

"U-Um!"

Ryū glances over at Kouji, who's fiddling with the hem of his shirt. After a moment he squares his shoulders and looks Tanaka in the eye. It's only then, with that purposeful eye contact, that Ryū realises that Hinata's friends have both grown since the last time he saw them. The thought sparks a chain reaction and all of a sudden he's remembering Hinata so proudly announcing he grew 3mm to the lanky Nekoma kid, and he chokes on a spluttered laugh.

"W-What?" Kouji asks self-consciously, frowning, but Ryū waves him off.

"No, no, it's nothing, I was just thinking of—" The way Hinata had made his friend line up and asked Asahi to measure them... "Pffffft~" But then he catches the kid's eye again and he's pouting, looking solidly dejected, so Ryū straightens up again and lays a hand on his shoulder reassuringly. "Sorry. You were saying?"

Kouji's eyes are wide as he stares at him. "W... Well, uh... Tanaka-senpai," he starts, and already Ryū likes where this is going. "I didn't... Um, at the... game, I didn't get a chance t-to, uh... thank you—"

Hinata is back, glowering at his feet, arms crossed and eyes narrowed. Kouji cuts off when he catches sight of his friend and immediately hops down from the dance game platform and nudges Hinata's shoulder with a murmured, "What's up?"

Ryū hangs back, admittedly confused, and that's when the day gets weirder than it had _any_ business being.

* * *

"Tanaka-senpai—" Kouji is flushing harder than Ryū thought he was capable of, immobile since the moment Ryū grabbed his wrist and dragged him to the bathroom for a 'talk'. "I really don't— I'm not— I think you're, um, misunderstanding—!"

Ryū hushes his new confidante with exaggerated shushing motions, and looks around the empty bathroom to make sure the coast his clear, checks the stalls, glances around the corner of the entrance.

Then he leans forward, fixing Kouji with an insistent stare, and demands in an urgent whisper, "When Hinata mumbled 'stupid boyfriend', tell me he wasn't talking about Kageyama."

Kouji's got that expression again. _That one_, you know, the one he always gets.

Honestly, Ryū's kind of surprised. Looking at him, you wouldn't think Kouji would be such a soft kid. He's tall for his age, voice broken and low, mannerisms gruff, dark hair spiked and thick eyebrows perpetually drawn together. But in reality, he blushes very easily, he struggles to get his words out, is flustered in a heartbeat, and calls his friends' from other schools' upperclassman senpai without a second thought. And he plays with the hem of his shirt, like how he was before Hinata came and—

The trail of thought immediately gets cut off when Ryū winces and glances back. "Tell me we won't have to deal with couple fights like this for the whole of next year. Tell me this isn't the team we've inherited."

Kouji facepalms. His ears are pink.

Ryū barely takes notice, instead resolutely texting Ennoshita with a flurry of exclamation points and demanding an emergency meeting because 'there's something about our first years you have to know, Captain...'

* * *

Here's how it happens.

Ennoshita casually brings it up with Hinata after practice one day, and Ryū didn't manage to escape the changing room fast enough to avoid accidentally playing spectator to the conversation. Except it isn't as uncomfortable as he's expecting, and pretty soon it's Ryū who's the one burning with questions while Ennoshita and Hinata are back to talking about how early a truly acceptable practice time can get away with being.

"Hey, Hinata..."

"Hmm?"

"If you're dating Kageyama, why did you organise a gōkon?"

"Oh, Tanaka-san!" Hinata wheels around. "Did Kouji tell you, then?"

"Hey, don't try to change the subject, huh~" Ryū places his hands on his hips, bare chest puffed out in a show of smug defiance. "Embarrassed, are we? Don't want to answer the question, hmm?~"

But Hinata doesn't get flustered like Tanaka was aiming for, and instead tilts his head. "Well, it... Didn't Kouji tell you?" he repeats.

Ryū's suddenly getting a bad feeling about this. "Tell me... what..." he says slowly with narrowed eyes.

Ennoshita not so subtly marches out the club room, closing the door with a pointed look at Ryū as he does.

Hinata's smiling in a way he decidedly doesn't like. "Well, Kouji asked me to arrange it, obviously!"

"Huh?"

"Because that time after our game with Shiratorizawa, when you spoke to him?"

"...Huh?"

Hinata huffs, and crosses his arms. "Really, Tanaka-senpai. Didn't you listen to Kouji at all?"

"Well, I..." Ryū trails off, thinking back. "He tried saying something but you came back crying about Kageyama—"

"I was not!"

"—and totally dropped it! How was I to know he wanted to talk to me, huh? I've barely spoken to the guy, I'm surprised he even knew who I was."

The way Hinata raises an eyebrow at Ryū, almost suspiciously, puts him on edge. But his next words are really what deliver the finishing blow.

"Tanaka-senpai, you're really not that great with romance, are you?"

* * *

Okay? See. Now you get it. And _that's_ how Ryū indirectly gets confessed to by his dance-off nemesis at the end of his second year in high school. The full story.

...Almost.

Heh.

**Author's Note:**

> [prompt](https://sportsanime.dreamwidth.org/13854.html?thread=5127710#cmt5127710) / [what's a gōkon?](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_dating#Japan)


End file.
